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Report - Bourne Stream - Bournemouth - 08/06/08

28DL Member

An old one of mine, lost most of the pics when a HD went bang, but still have a few.

Visited a few times with S4B and NorthernSteve, but June 08 was the only time I took a camera

Some history
The Bourne Stream (aka the River Bourne) flows through the centre of Bournemouth. It is a very "flashy" watercourse (ie it has very little flow usually, but give it a bit of rain and it turns into a torrent) with quite a small catchment area, but urbanisation and culverting means when it does decide to flood it does it in a big way, and very quickly.

The Bourne has 2 sources, both in Poole. The first (and interesting one) is in the fields of Branksome Rec, second one comes from the water works at Knighton Heath - a mix of treated effluent and abstracted water - the two join at Coy Pond. The Bourne runs almost in a straight line from here through Bournemouth gardens and out into the sea next to the pier.

The Bourne actually used to be the main fresh water supply for Bournemouth, and our entry point is where the Bournemouth & District Water Works used to be - where the drinking water was abstracted - and more importantly where some nice tunnelage begins under the old town gas works.

Pics

Fellow urban spelunker S4B at the point where we go from weird 3-storey butressed concrete (sorry - no pics of that!) to good old red brick

Looking upstream towards the S-bend (yes - this drain has a chicane!) with a horribly bodged sidepipe poking out